Hotflash inc: Here doing the research you don’t have time for… and reminding you this is going somewhere good! This is the free weekly newsletter, a little different this week because, well, as you’ll see I was a little different this week.
“I got swept up in urgency this week,
which is always rooted in trauma
For me this week around money
around rejection
around exile.
That’s my head’s story.
But the pleasure and wisdom in my body tells me
in truth, all is deeply well
And I just need to return
To the Mother Well
And the slower I go
the safer I am.”
I don’t think I can describe the past few days any better than this, part of the timely newsletter I got hours ago from Sarah Durham Wilson, aka Sarah of Magdalene. I don’t know her but I just love her. She’s so smart. I’m diving into some of the more feminist writings about this menopause transition, and her book Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine is ready and waiting on my bedside table.
I am just weeks away from entering menopause. It’s been a lot and it’s been everything. I saw the journalist and fierce commentator Mona Eltahawy when I was in New York for the Perry talk (you can watch that in two parts here) and I asked her about it. I’ve contributed an essay to Mona’s upcoming menopause anthology Bloody Hell! And other stories. She’s been on the podcast, I’ve been a fan for a long time, pre-Hotflash inc, and talking to her in a cosy bar in Harlem for a few minutes was, well, great.
I’d seen a lot of videos of Mona saying “menopause is kicking my ass” and so I asked her about it. She said it was and it almost did, but it gets so much better. Not right away, not instantly, but the storm clears. And the path unfolds.
And in the weeks since I guess I thought the storm had cleared. (Don’t we always think the storm has cleared, and there won’t be any more storms?) But this week, more damn storm, and I reacted like a toddler, whining “but I’ve already had so many of these alreadyyyyyy!” and wanting to throw myself on the couch face down like I once saw my niece do when she was a little one and it was so awesomely dramatic that I remember it every time it all gets too much.
I’ve noticed something recently: when I get in this kind of storm, I stop all the fun things: listening to music, jumping on my mini trampoline; private stuff. Why? Everything contracts, tightens and constricts, that’s why. The dancer Gabrielle Roth says: “In many Shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: ‘When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories?”
After my mom died at 53 – my age now – I went on a three-year tear of what can only be called living out loud. I exhausted myself from 27 to 30, and probably more than a few other people too. Just trying to pack in the moments, because I’d seen so early how fleeting they were.
I soon realized that living as if you are going to die tomorrow is unsustainable and expensive. In addition to decades-long, life-altering IBS, that grief-fueled storm left me with a huge credit card bill I couldn’t pay. So I got a waitressing job on the weekend, more than once pouring coffee for a person who was reading an article or a column I’d written in that day’s edition of the Ottawa Sun. (I most definitely did not slow down back then, but I did pay off the credit card, got a few lifelong friends and tons of great stories, too.)
Perhaps I’ve been doing some of that living out loud in the last few months since my birthday, since that invisible wall of making it to the time of my mother’s death has lifted, and I’ve been able to see the rest of my life. As I can start to see the end of an epic perimenopause, and feel the up-leveling that comes with it.
But this week, as it felt several stressful things hit me at once, and I amplified everything else into a big giant fiery ball, I started to lose it. I cried all day Thursday and Thursday night. I woke up the next morning in knots of anxious despair. Meditating? Impossible. I tried, but the horrid thoughts of all I wasn’t doing and couldn’t do had taken over. Money. Rejection. Exile.
I’ve lost endless days to this kind of mental maelstrom in my life, limping along and punishing myself until it just petered out, like a car running out of bad gas. On Friday morning, I opened up a very important piece of paper, looking for reminders, for help. It came from a session I had at Kamalaya Wellness in Koh Samui earlier this year. It was with a sage named Srini, who basically wrote down the secret to navigating life peacefully, in an hour, on one page. (Srini also gave me the Cloud Atlas quote I’ve been using about searching for the true truth in this menopause conversation, and told me how important that work was for me, because even though I was tired and overwhelmed, he said I lit up from the inside when I spoke about it. And for that, too, I am eternally grateful.)
It was one of the most important hours of my life. The paper is getting dog-eared and it was only from April, I've looked at it so many times since then. But on Friday, I noticed for the first time that in the middle Srini wrote “Slow down”.
It slapped me in the face, in the best way.
I did do that. And throughout the day, lo and behold, the storm fell away.
Today, Saturday, all the same stressors are there. But the storm is gone. And I remain. Physically, yes, I did less. But mostly mentally, I required less.
This is the kind of work that my beautiful friend Gabriella Espinosa does, based on her own experience of menopause, and although I wanted to understand it, I don’t think I maybe really got how it all came together until now.
She writes: “Looking back I realize that residing in the discomfort of this ‘in between space’ gifted me the opportunity to embark on deep inner work, growth and transformation. I got to know myself better, focused on the things that really mattered and tuned into my heart’s deepest desire and its expression in the world.”
She writes about being “held by the self-care practices cultivated through yoga, somatic movement, meditation and nutrition”. And I realized those are also the things that get forgotten when we tense up and force ourselves to do more, to go harder – because anything else feels like it’s not enough.
One of my theme songs as I flipped between denying my grief and seizing life by the horns back in my late 20s was I hope you dance by Lee Ann Womack. I still can’t read those damn lyrics without tearing up, and I’m writing this in a Starbucks for crying out loud. All these years later, I see a deeper level now. It’s not just about seizing every damn opportunity in front of you, to go to a party three hours away or to be a television freelancer on the weekend or to ask the guy you like out. It’s about giving yourself the space to dance.
And when she sang “Never settle for the path of least resistance”, I now know that sometimes the path of least resistance is not about being lazy. For a lot of us, the path of least resistance is a familiar hurried hamster wheel of worry and performance and over-functioning. Rest? That’s radical. That goes against everything we believe about ourselves. That takes intention. And courage.
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance…I hope you dance.
I feel like something came together this week. The storm came and I got lost in it and then got out of it. Faster than I ever have before. There are less storms, too, overall. Praise be.
I just might be on to something.
Protecting and nourishing myself – my energy, my life force – is the most important work I have to do. That we have to do. That the rest of the planet needs us to do. Forever and always and from now on.
Slow down. It doesn’t cost a thing. And it gives us everything.
When I forget – when we forget – all we can do is remember.
And start again.
it's real hard!
Beautifully written. A second bout of Covid is def slowing me down as of Thursday. Cannot wait to read BLOODY HELL and your piece in it. Huzzah to life in slow-mo :)